


Jaquemart VIII - Solitaire

by alanharnum



Series: Jaquemart [10]
Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:35:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum





	Jaquemart VIII - Solitaire

JAQUEMART  
by  
Alan Harnum

Utena and its characters belongs to Be-PaPas, Chiho Saito,   
Shogakukan, Shokaku Iinkai and TV Tokyo.

This copy of the story is from my Archive of Our Own page at http://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum.

 

VIII. Solitaire

* * *

"This place has the best noodles in the whole city. You're   
lucky to have me for a guide."

"Yes; it's nice to know an independently wealthy man who can  
afford to take me out for noodles for lunch."

Touga smiled at her, and led the way to a relatively-  
secluded table in the corner of the busy restaurant. Mild,  
pleasant smells of cooking assailed Utena from every angle.   
"I'll take you someplace fancy for dinner, if you like, but you  
seemed like the kind of person who could appreciate this place."

They sat down across from one another. Utena cracked her  
chopsticks and dug in. "You're right," she said after one  
mouthful. "These are the best noodles I've ever had."

Touga poured tea for them from the small china pot on his  
tray, then sampled his own noodles. "I found this place a few  
years back. Took Nanami here, once, but she didn't like it."

"I don't remember her as the type who would," Utena said  
carefully, sipping green tea. "She'd probably want to go to  
fancy places all the time."

Touga nodded. "I managed to catch her this morning, unlike  
yesterday." He paused, hesitated, then continued uncomfortably.  
"There was something strange about her."

"Oh?" Utena slurped her noodles, then remembered herself,  
and attempted to eat a little more demurely. 

"She didn't seem as happy to see me as she usually does.  
Like my presence bothered her." He shrugged suddenly,   
dismissively. "Perhaps it was because I went up to her room. I  
think she might have come to Houou with a boyfriend that she  
doesn't want me to know about--Utena, are you all right?" 

"Noodle went down wrong way," she managed to gasp, gulping  
tea to clear the block. "So, Nanami's got a boyfriend?"

He shrugged again. "I don't know. But she had a double  
room, and..." He trailed off. "This isn't really appropriate  
conversation, forgive me. It's her business."

"Yeah," Utena said, wiping her eyes and drinking more tea.  
"Her business. How's she doing otherwise?"

"She's upset about what happened with her friend. I managed  
to get her an appointment to visit him, which I hope will do them  
both good." His expression softened, sadness appeared. "Mitsuru  
had a lot of potential. It's a terrible thing that happened."   
He dropped his voice to a low whisper. "But, at the same time,  
awful though it may be for me to say, perhaps advantageous. It  
may be the thread that pulls away the cover for what the deputy  
chairman is up to." He frowned. "Whatever that really is..."

Utena leaned forward. "Have you found out anything new  
since we talked yesterday?"

"No. I've been busy with other things. I have to be so  
cautious..."

"And I'm the first one you ever confided this to, after..."

"Over a year now."

"Why? Wasn't there anyone else you could trust? You said  
you thought your sister was somehow involved too, in... whatever  
was done to us at Ohtori. Whatever it was that made our memories  
not match up, why I remember you but you don't remember me, why  
you had those dreams where I was a prince..."

Lies and deception. Hadn't she used to hate them? Now they  
were coming so easily. Was it okay to try and deceive a  
deceiver?

"My sister?" He leaned back in the booth seat and sighed.  
"There were others, too, I'm quite certain. Those who were on  
the Student Council with me, on the year I served. Saionji  
Kyouichi, Arisugawa Juri, Kaoru Miki. It's no coincidence that  
events now seem to be revolving around the current Council."

"So, why not?"

"I told you that Saionji and I drifted apart, yesterday,"  
Touga replied slowly. "Well, that wasn't the whole truth. We  
used to be friends, but... he was a better friend to me than I  
ever was to him. I didn't really believe in friendship near the  
end of my days at Ohtori. And, finally, I did something that he  
couldn't forgive, and that was the end of our friendship." He  
was silent for a time, and then looked away from her as he  
continued. "And Arisugawa and I never were really friends to  
begin with, even when we were on the Council together. I hurt   
a... friend of hers, though, and after that, she wanted nothing  
to do with me."

"What about your sister, though? Couldn't you trust her?"

"I didn't want to get her involved. She was happy, living  
her own life... I felt the same way about Miki, even before he  
came back and became involved with the Duellist's Society, which,  
of course, made it impossible for me to ever trust him with   
this."

"Oh." Utena looked down at her near-empty teacup. "So, you  
thought you could handle it on your own?"

"It was more that I didn't think I had the right to involve  
them," he said quietly. "Not just on my own suspicions, my own  
grudges... with my own attempts to atone, I guess."

"Atone?"

"Like I said," he muttered, eyes narrowing, "I wasn't a very  
good person for a long time. When I began to dream of the prince  
with your face, it was like an epiphany for me... the person I  
used to be wouldn't have hesitated to involve other people, even  
to use them, to lie to them..." He shook his head. "But that's  
not the kind of person I want to be."

"Trying to make up for mistakes you don't even remember  
making?" Utena murmured.

"Perhaps," he replied softly. "Or maybe just for the ones  
that I do remember."

"I guess that sometimes, you've got to go it alone."

He nodded. "Sometimes." Then he reached out and placed his  
hand over hers on the table. "But, maybe, not any more."

She looked down at his hand, managed a smile, then put her  
other hand on top of his. "No. Not any more."

* * *

"Thanks for lunch."

"Well, thanks for giving me a call. I wasn't sure if you   
would, after all I said yesterday. Thank you for believing me."

"I'm glad you trusted me enough to tell me."

Utena hoped he wouldn't ask again for the number of her   
room.

"Call me later?"

Inside, she sighed with relief. "Yeah. Later. Bye."

"Goodbye."

He didn't try to kiss her this time, which somehow both   
disappointed and relieved her. She stepped down from the van,  
waved as it pulled away from the hotel, and then headed towards  
the lobby. The winter day was cold and bright, lending a fierce  
clarity to the landscape; every angle seemed sharper, almost   
threateningly so. 

As she reached for the door, Juri's voice stopped her.  
"Utena."

She turned, startled. The other woman had been leaning  
against the back of one of the decorative wooden pillars at the  
front of the hotel, hidden from Utena's sight as she approached.  
"Juri!"

"Who does the van belong to?" Juri asked, blunt and stinging  
as the edge of a fencing foil.

"Touga," Utena answered after a moment.

Juri nodded, apparently unsurprised by the answer, and said  
nothing.

"I called him up and we went out for lunch," Utena   
explained, "I wanted to try and get more of a handle on him--"

"And you were bored," Juri snapped. "Like you were   
yesterday, when you left the room and sat down in the lobby in  
plain sight of anyone who walked in. Like you were bored when  
you agreed to go with Touga, letting someone sneak into our rooms  
and leave those invitations."

Utena shrank a little. "Where's Shiori?" she asked, looking  
around as though she expected to see her emerge as a second   
accuser at any moment.

"I sent her up to the rooms ahead of me, to tell Nanami. We  
saw the van pull in as we were walking towards the lobby from the  
parking lot." Juri frowned disapprovingly. "I had no idea you  
were going to be the one getting out."

"I don't know if Nanami's back yet. You see, Touga showed  
up, and he managed to arrange it so that she could see   
Tsuwabuki..."

Juri paled a bit. "And she actually went?"

Utena blinked. "Well, yes."

"Damn it, Tenjou." Juri looked deeply angry for a moment,  
and then slumped wearily back against the pillar. "He's got both  
of you trusting him. I thought you'd at least be more cautious."

"I don't trust him," Utena protested. "I just--"

Juri held up her hand, and Utena stopped talking. "Let me  
tell you how lunch went," she said slowly. "It was very nice,  
he was extremely charming, you began to trust him a little more,   
and you're starting to think we should return his memories to  
him."

"No--yes, well, okay, some of that." Utena nodded   
grudgingly.

"Don't you realize that's exactly what he wants?" Juri  
asked softly. "Think, Utena. You think he's actually changed?"

Utena opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked at  
the ground for a moment, cold concrete swept clean of snow.   
"Yes," she said finally. "I think he has. And I think whatever   
it was that happened between him and Shiori-san, you don't have   
the right to hate him for it forever."

Juri opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"Did he tell you about it, or something?" she said at last.  
Her lip curled in a semi-sneer. "Give his side of the story?  
How did that come up, I wonder... did he guide the conversation  
to it?"

"He didn't even mention it," Utena said. "I can put things  
together myself, you know... you don't want to trust him, Juri,  
because then you'd have to stop being so angry at him for hurting  
Shiori."

"I know the kind of man he is," Juri replied quietly.   
"He'll hurt you and tell you it's for your own good, and he'll  
have you believing it is if you're not careful."

"You think I don't know that kind of man just as well as you  
do, or better?" Utena locked eyes with Juri, who stared back   
just as intensely; neither moved their gaze away. "And he isn't.  
Maybe he was. But not any more."

"Leopards don't change their spots that easily. Open your  
eyes, Utena." 

"They are open! Stop talking to me like I'm a child!"   
Utena realized she was beginning to sound petulant, but didn't  
really care. They weren't at Ohtori any more, and Juri didn't  
have any right to be so condescending.

"If you stop acting like one, I will."

Utena finally looked away. "I'm not acting like a child.   
I'm just giving him a chance."

"And are you going to give Akio a chance, too?"

Utena snapped her head up and glared. "No," she said, "I'm  
going to stop him. For good. So he can't hurt anyone ever  
again."

"I'm not saying Touga hasn't necessarily changed," Juri said  
after a moment, quietly and almost apologetically. "Yes, I don't  
like him, but that's not all because of the hurt he did to  
Shiori. I didn't like him at Ohtori before that very much   
either. We can't afford to trust him because there's the chance  
that he is just pulling another scheme."

"But--"

Juri cut her off sharply. "Maybe he does deserve a chance."  
She lowered her voice. "But we can't give him one. You  
understand that, don't you?"

Utena resisted the urge to nod. Juri was wrong, or, at   
least, she wasn't entirely right. But it was hard not to agree,  
when Juri sounded so certain...

"Here comes Shiori," Juri said, looking over Utena's   
shoulder, through the glass-fronted doors to the hotel lobby.   
"That's all I really wanted to say anyway."

Shiori exited the hotel with an agitated look on her face.  
"Nanami's not there." She looked at Utena and smiled hesitantly.  
"I'm glad to see you showed up, though." Then, to Juri, "Where  
did the van go?"

Juri said nothing. Utena cleared her throat. "Actually, I  
was, uhh, in it... went for lunch with Touga... he dropped me  
off... it's his van."

"Oh," said Shiori, forcibly keeping her smile on her face  
and all emotion out of her voice. 

"Anyway, I am a little worried that Nanami isn't back yet...  
the visit couldn't have taken this long..." Utena glanced at her  
watch and frowned.

"Visit?" Shiori asked Juri.

"Touga apparently got her an appointment to see Tsuwabuki,"  
Juri said, her doubt in that fact quite evident.

"With Akio's help, Nanami said..." Utena was growing more  
and more worried with each second. "Oh, damn, I was so stupid...  
even if Touga's on the level, Akio..."

"Akio won't hurt her," Juri said after a moment. "He   
doesn't want that... he wants something else."

"You sound awfully sure of that, Juri," Shiori said in a  
dull voice. As Utena watched, she saw something stir in   
Shiori's eyes, then submerge again. She blinked, confused and  
uncertain that it had been anything other than the angle of the  
light.

"Three of us walked into his clutches yesterday," Juri  
muttered, looking at her feet. Utena got the impression there  
was something she wasn't saying. "If he wanted something so  
simple as our deaths, he could have done it yesterday,   
somehow..."

"Maybe I should call Touga," Utena said. "I've got his  
cell-phone number..."

"And ask him what, that his sister, whom you're not supposed  
to know too well, is missing?" Juri replied.

"You could do that," Shiori said softly, as though a little  
afraid of saying anything at all. "Didn't you say he came here  
yesterday looking for Nanami? So he knows she's in town. Just  
say it would be nice if the three of you got together. Then ask  
him for her room number. Call him back a few minutes later, and  
say you can't reach her... maybe he'll..." She trailed off.   
"Never mind."

"No, go on," Utena said, blinking. "That's a good idea."

"Well, then..." Shiori began. Then the cab pulled up, and  
Nanami stepped out. She handed a fistful of bills to the driver,  
shook her head at his apparent offer of change, and turned to  
look at them. The left side of her face bore a faint red tinge  
that looked as though it had come from a hard slap.

"Hey, Nanami," Utena said slowly, as the cab left the four  
of them standing alone outside the hotel.

"Hey, Utena," Nanami said. She looked as though she wanted  
to cry. 

Shiori waved. "Good to see you're okay, Nanami."

"What happened to you?" Juri asked.

"Kind as always, Juri-sempai," Nanami murmured. "Let's go  
inside. It's cold out here."

* * *

"That's really messed up," Utena said when Nanami finished her  
story.

"Ohtori's Student Councils seem to have that habit," Juri   
drawled from her place near the window.

"No, no." Utena waved her hands. "I mean, the guy thinks  
his friend is being abused by her boyfriend, so he challenges him  
to a duel and kills him by accident, but it turns out it was   
actually the boyfriend's sister? That makes the Council that you  
two were on seem pretty normal by comparison." 

"Not that we weren't messed up as well," said Juri with a  
vaguely bitter smile.

"Yeah, I don't mean--umm, sorry, I don't mean to say..."   
Utena hung her head and slumped back against the headboard of her  
bed, crossing her ankles and trailing off into an apologetic   
mutter.

"It's not funny," Nanami said fiercely, dabbing at her eyes  
with a tissue. Halfway through her story, when she'd begun to  
get choked up, Chu-Chu had crawled into her lap; she'd begun to  
almost unconsciously stroke him, and was still at it, an empty,   
mechanical motion that seemed to give her comfort all the same.   
"It's awful."

"Yeah," Utena agreed. "I didn't mean it was funny. It's  
really sad. For Tsuwabuki, for everyone." She sighed as she  
realized she was trying to discount her own guilt by treating the  
situation too lightly. If _you_ hadn't stayed in that coffin for  
seven years, she thought, this wouldn't have happened. Now Akio  
had a new generation of wounded hearts to bleed for his pleasure.

Shiori shifted in the desk chair to look at the others, a   
pen in one hand and a pad of hotel stationery in the other. "I  
made up a list," she said shyly. "While Nanami was telling her  
story." Three pairs of eyes turned to look at her, and she   
seemed to wilt a little; then, she began to speak in earnest  
again, newly confident. "Anyway, I titled it 'Things to Deal  
With'..."

Juri chuckled, standing within a pool of sunlight before the  
window with her arms crossed. "You and your lists." 

The words were clearly affectionate; Shiori took them as  
such, and smiled. "Just because I like to have things   
organized..."

"Hey, hey," Juri said with mock panic. "Don't tell them my  
terrible secret."

"She's a slob," Shiori commented sotto voce to Nanami and  
Utena. "She reads the newspaper in bed, and then she just  
_leaves_ it there for me to pick up. And she leaves her socks in  
these weird little rolls on the floor."

"The secret is out," Juri murmured sadly.

Utena laughed softly. "Juri, I'm shocked."

"I'm so disillusioned," muttered Nanami, smiling a little.

"And she never even bothers to write out a master copy of   
her class schedule, so I have to do it for her..." Shiori   
shrugged. "Anyway, 'Things to Deal With'. Number one is Akio,  
of course; number two is this Duellist's Society and the  
President, I put them as one item on the list because they're  
connected; number three is Tsuwabuki's friend, Mari, though I'm  
really not sure what we can do to help her..."

"Utena should talk to her," Nanami muttered, bitterness and  
hope both present in her voice. "Maybe she'll do a better job of  
getting her to open up than I did."

Utena glanced over at Nanami. "I could try, I guess," she  
said slowly, "but I don't know who she is, and it's probably not  
a good idea for me to go to Ohtori..."

"Akio knows where you are anyway," Juri pointed out. "Those  
invitations make that clear."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right..."

Shiori coughed pointedly. "Anyway, number four is those  
invitations, we have to decide what we're going to do about   
those, because the gallery opening is tomorrow night--"

Utena pondered for a moment, hand on her chin, then said,   
"Well, Akio obviously wants us to go, so maybe we shouldn't go...  
on the other hand, maybe he expects us to stay the hell away,   
which might be what he actually wants, so maybe we should go..."

"The list isn't finished," Shiori said, slightly annoyed.  
"We can discuss what to do about the items on it when I'm done  
reading it, okay?"

Juri caught Utena's gaze and rolled her eyes. Shiori   
spotted the exchange, frowned, and snatched up a wadded ball of  
hotel stationery (Utena guessed it was a discarded earlier draft  
of the list) to fling at Juri. Juri caught it casually and   
tossed it into the wastebasket.

Shiori shook her head and sighed. "Number five is Touga,"  
she said shortly, "number six is whatever that strange voice  
Utena heard at the Ohtori family mansion is... I can see you want  
to speak, Utena, so just let me say that other than Akio being   
the most important thing we need to deal with, this list is not  
arranged in order of importance... number seven is these 'ghosts'  
that Nanami encountered at Ohtori... number eight is Miki...  
number nine is... number nine is..." 

"Number nine?" Juri prompted.

Shiori bit the end of her pen and frowned. "I wrote a nine  
down at the end here, but never filled it in... I don't think I  
forgot anything..." She looked around at the others. "Did I  
leave anything out?"

"What about Tsuwabuki?" Nanami said, a touch of ice in it.

Shiori shook her head. "Nope. I thought about putting him  
on, but... what can we do about him? He's in jail, and unless  
you're thinking of breaking him out--you're not actually thinking  
that, are you, Nanami?"

After a moment, Nanami shook her head.

"When two different worlds collide, people slip through the  
cracks and get hurt," Juri said softly. "Tsuwabuki's being   
punished in the 'normal' world for something that happened in the  
world Akio's created at Ohtori... that's one of the reasons we   
have to be so careful, because the same thing could happen to   
us."

Shiori was still gnawing on the end of her pen. "I'm sure  
I didn't forget anything..." she said uncertainly.

"Don't worry about it for now," Utena said. "Even if you   
did, we all forgot it too, so it can't be that important."

Shiori nodded, but still looked unhappy. "So, in order...  
number one, Akio..." 

"Pass on him for now," Juri suggested. "Since he's   
undoubtedly the first cause of all this, dealing with the other  
things on the list will eventually lead back to him."

Utena and Nanami voiced their agreement. Shiori went on.  
"Number two, Duellist's Society and President Akino Akami..."

"I don't know what to do about them," Utena said. "We've   
got so little information. Touga might know more--"

"He's number five," Shiori interrupted. "We'll get to him  
in order."

"We could kidnap the President and interrogate her," Nanami  
said. "Or the four of us could go after her together... she   
wouldn't be so tough then, even with those three goons of hers."

Juri put her hand on her forehead. "We can't just go   
around kidnapping people, Nanami."

"She's evil!" Nanami snapped. "I know you met her, but you  
didn't see her like I did... I think she might have really hurt  
me, if Mari hadn't shown up. She's dangerous."

"I don't see why we can't talk about something else on the  
list in relation to something higher than it in order," Utena  
argued.

"Like Mari," Nanami agreed. "She's only number three on the  
list, but if we're talking about Akino--"

"Well, why don't I just tear the list up and we can talk  
about things at random?" Shiori said, frustration evident.

"Shiori, it's just a list," Juri said quietly, "it's not a  
holy testament." 

Shiori sighed. "You're right. I'm sorry. I was just  
trying to help, but..."

"No, it's a big help," Utena said. "It's just we need to be  
flexible. So... any ideas about what to do about the President?"

"Not with the information we have to go on," Juri said  
dejectedly.

"And Mari?"

"I don't think she wants to be helped," Nanami muttered.

Utena rubbed her temples. "What was number four again?"

"The invitations," Shiori prompted.

"It's a trap," Nanami said instantly.

"Or it's something he absolutely doesn't want us to be  
present at, and he wants us to think it's a trap so we'll stay  
away," Juri countered.

"Argh," said Utena, holding her head in her hands. "Why  
don't we just flip a damn coin?"

"I think we should go," Shiori said. "If it's a trap, we  
can probably escape from it--I mean, it's in public, there'll be  
lots of people there, and we can rely on each other. And if it's  
something he wants us to stay away from, we've got to be there."

Nanami frowned. "Risky." She was still petting Chu-Chu,   
who looked to have fallen asleep.

"Risky," Juri concurred.

"Yes," Shiori said quietly, "and leaving our normal lives  
behind to come running back into a nightmare we'd forgotten we  
ever lived was just so safe to begin with."

The laughter began with Juri; low, cold, tinged with bitter  
humour. Infectiously, it spread to Nanami, whose tones were  
higher and sharper. Finally, Shiori herself chuckled softly.  
Only Utena didn't laugh.

*"So now we all have to suffer along with you?"*

*Nanami's voice is full of pain. Her clothes are   
dishevelled from their scuffle.* 

*"What gives you the right, Utena? What gives you the   
right?" She's still trying to get her shoe back on properly,   
and the tracks of tears mar her smooth cheeks.*

*"Nothing. I gave myself the right, Nanami."*

What kind of thing had that been to say, to someone whose  
life she'd just torn apart?

"So, what do you say, Utena?" Juri, Shiori, Nanami--she  
couldn't say who had asked the question, for her mind was far  
from here.

"I think Shiori's right. Looking at our options... we have  
to go," she replied in a dull voice.

Juri nodded. "I agree. But it doesn't mean we go in  
unprepared. Miki's undoubtedly involved in the gallery opening,  
since it's being dedicated in Kozue's name--I'll call him and see  
what information I can get from him. Maybe Nanami or Shiori can  
go out and see if they can see the gallery before the official  
opening."

Hadn't there been something better to say? But what could  
she say, that Nanami would have understood? She hadn't been  
forced to live seven years with the agony of failure... she   
wouldn't have been able to appreciate why--

"I'm not going back there alone! Those angry ghosts had it  
in for me!"

"The ghosts are number seven on the list..."

"The really important thing if we're going to a social  
function of this nature is to find Utena something proper to   
wear."

"Nanami, be serious."

"I am serious, Juri-sempai--you haven't been her roommate  
for two nights like I have. I've seen her wardrobe! She's got  
nothing appropriate. And she can't borrow from me or Shiori,  
because she's too tall, and you--well, the two of you have  
different builds--"

"I'm aware of that, Nanami, but I really do think that's  
there's more important concerns than whether Utena has anything  
stylish to wear."

"Look in her drawer--you're a model, Juri-sempai, you know  
how important appearances are at a function like this. And we've  
got until tomorrow evening to take her shopping."

*"A child like you can't appreciate my ideals."*

There were drawers opening, clothes rustling.

"...you may have a point, Nanami. If there's time, we  
probably should get her something appropriate to wear."

"I'm not going to wear a stupid frilly dress," Utena   
suddenly snapped, bolting upright on the bed. "And don't go  
through my drawers without asking, okay?"

Juri slid the drawer closed and turned around. "Sorry," she  
said unapologetically. "Shiori, what's next?"

"Touga," Shiori said. "What do we do about him?"

"Too risky to treat him with anything more than suspicion,"  
Juri said, and looked to the rest for confirmation. Nanami and  
Shiori slowly nodded.

Utena didn't, but said merely, "Fine."

"Number six, this voice in her head Utena heard--"

"I need a drink," Utena said, swinging her legs off the bed  
and heading for the door. "I'm going to the vending machines.  
Anyone else want anything?" She opened the door, stepped into   
the hall, and was gone before anyone had a chance to say  
anything.

* * *

"One, two, three, four... oh, come on, I know I had another one   
in here... damn it..."

A hand reached over her shoulder, as she sorted through the  
change in her palm, and dropped a coin into the slot. The   
vending machine let out a mechanical clunk and a can of iced tea   
dropped down from its innards into the tray at the bottom.

"Thanks," Utena said, reaching down to pick it up and  
glancing back at her rescuer.

Shiori nodded, and moved to feed more change into the   
machine as Utena stepped aside. "You left in such a hurry that  
no one had a chance to say they wanted anything."

"Yeah." Utena pressed the cold can to her forehead and  
sighed. "Sorry."

Two more cans dropped, and Shiori took up one in each hand.  
"Wanted some time alone to think?" she asked, popping open one   
and taking a small sip.

Grudgingly, Utena nodded. 

"You don't agree with the rest of us about Touga, do you?"

"No," Utena said after a moment.

Shiori leaned back against the vending machine. "Did Juri   
tell you about him and me?"

"A little," Utena replied guardedly.

"It's funny," Shiori said quietly. "Juri likes to think of  
me as being an innocent she has to protect." A tiny smile came  
onto her face as she drank again. "But she's much more naive  
than I am in matters like these. She wants to think that it was  
only Touga's fault, that I was just his victim... but it wasn't  
like that. I knew his reputation, and I knew what I was getting   
into from the start."

"Oh." Discussing matters of the heart with Shiori wasn't  
really what she'd wanted to do when she left the room, but there  
was no polite way to brush her off and be alone again.

"But it hurt all the same, when it ended." Shiori pushed   
off and began to walk back towards the hallway, out of the nook  
where the vending and ice machines were located. "Isn't that   
strange?"

Utena lowered the can to rest against her throat and looked  
down at the floor. "No. It always hurts when things like that   
end, even if you knew from the start that it was the only the way  
they could end."

Shiori paused and looked back. "I think you really do know  
what you're talking about," she said after a moment. One corner  
of her smile curved slightly, recasting it sardonically. Then  
she shrugged and turned away. "I'll let you be alone like you  
wanted to be... make up some story for Juri and Nanami, to   
explain why you're gone. Don't worry."

"Shiori--"

"Hmm?"

Utena shuffled her feet and dropped the can to her side; the  
memory of its chill remained against her throat. "Do you regret  
that you met me again?"

Shiori flinched. Her back was to Utena, hiding her face.   
"I don't really know how to answer that. Actions speak louder  
than words, though; I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yeah. I guess so." But what choice would there be, after  
the return of memories? Utena thought; I suppose you had no   
choice but to follow me.

"I'm not angry at you like I used to be, Utena-kun; even if  
it hurt me at first, I'm not really important next to putting an  
end to Akio."

"Yes you are," Utena said instantly. "You all are--I didn't  
get you all into this with the intent that you'd get sacrificed  
to stop him. Please don't think that," she urged desperately.

Shiori finally looked back. "I don't think that," she said,  
apparently bewildered by the thought. "You're a good person; you  
wouldn't do that kind of thing."

Before Utena could say anything else, Shiori left her alone,  
passed out of sight around the corner. 

"I'm not so good as you think I am," Utena whispered. "I'm  
not nearly that good."

Faintly, from down the hallway, she heard Shiori say, "Oh my  
God, you're number nine." 

Then a too-silent silence fell; the hum of the motors of the  
vending machines faded from her ears, the fluorescent lights   
overhead dimmed subtly, and she felt a stirring in the air;   
attar, blood, iron, rain, fire, smoke...

Impressions assailed her like a thousand blunted swords, she  
stood near the centre of a storm, smelt the ozone tang of the  
lightning, heard the thunder's drums...

Turned the corner (she hadn't even been conscious of her  
motion), and saw Shiori pressed against the hallway's floral  
wallpaper like a pinned butterfly. A woman stood before her;   
tall, lovely, of unguessable age, a broad white hat shading   
her face. Their gazes were locked, and Utena swore she could  
see... something like translucent--almost, but not quite,   
transparent--black electricity crackling between them.

"Hold it!"

The woman turned, and Shiori slumped down like a marionette  
with cut strings. As her cool gaze swept over Utena, she felt  
something like a mild static shock across her entire body, and   
then the woman recoiled as though in physical pain.

Then her eyes widened fearfully, an expression Utena felt  
certain was almost totally alien to her (somehow, she was vaguely  
familiar), and she turned and ran.

Utena cocked the arm holding the iced tea can back over her  
shoulder (just like in softball, she thought vaguely) and   
_threw_. The can left her fingers like a bullet fired from a   
gun, and clipped the woman's left shoulder just as she rounded  
the corner heading towards the stairs. 

It did more than she'd expected or wanted. The woman cried  
out, trying but failing to muffle the sound, and was spun almost  
completely around by the impact; Utena was almost certain she  
heard bone crack. The woman staggered, face paling as she  
clutched her right hand to her injured shoulder. For a moment,  
Utena thought she might fall to the ground. Then she bolted out  
of sight towards the stairs.

Utena sprang forward to pursue her, then skidded to a halt  
with a muffled curse and knelt down by Shiori. To her relief,   
she saw that Shiori's eyes were open, though they were cloudy as  
though she'd just awoken from a long sleep. Even as Utena   
reached out to touch her shoulder, Shiori let out a soft groan   
and waved the hand away.

"I'm fine," she croaked, shaking her head. "Go after her.  
Tokiko. That was her name. She's important. Number nine."

"Are you sure?"

"Go!"

Utena went. Down the hall, past the crumpled, leaking iced  
tea can staining the blue carpet, out of the stairway door,  
footsteps ringing on the stairs as she took them three at a time,  
jumping as much as running, hearing Tokiko's footfalls faintly   
below her (something about that name, that face...), a flash of  
green dress through the narrow open newel of the winding stairs,  
bottom floor now, bursting through the door (EMERGENCY EXIT   
ONLY--ALARM WILL SOUND, but no alarm was sounding at all) just  
before it closed, to find herself in a narrow open-ended alley  
running between one side of the hotel and the building beside it.

Indoor slippers crunched on snow, and her breath fogged the  
air. No jacket, but she didn't feel the cold at all. Painfully  
blue sky overhead, everything--snow, walls, sky, body--clear and  
sharp and hard as a diamond.

No Tokiko, though.

"Fast," Utena murmured, and cast her head from side to side,  
seeking. 

There, distantly, across the street, a shape in green, left  
arm dangling limply, heading into the densely-wooded park that  
faced the hotel...

Utena burst into a run again, alley walls blurring around   
her, leaped a chest-high decorative hedge (losing one slipper in   
the process), dodged around a startled bellboy struggling to lead  
an elderly couple into the hotel while weighed down with their   
bags ("Pardon me!"), rushed across the street accompanied by the  
screeching of brakes and the honking of horns, (losing the second  
slipper), running over cold concrete in her socks as though it  
were summer grass. Into the park, passing beneath the prickly  
shadows of pine trees, darting around benches, closing in on the  
prey...

She felt wonderfully, vitally, powerfully alive, like she  
could climb a mountain or fight an army by herself. Or catch up  
to a panting, injured older woman near a dry fountain ringed by  
a dozen identical stone benches. 

Tokiko didn't seem to realize she was still being followed.  
She was half-bent over by the fountain, right hand clutching the  
rim as though to support herself, left arm hugged tight against  
her side. As Utena passed the circle of benches, a patch of  
unbroken, half-frozen snow cracked heavily beneath her foot, and  
Tokiko started and turned.

"Yo," Utena said, not winded at all. "If you're done   
running, how about answering some questions? Like who you are  
and what you're up to and what the hell you were doing to Shiori-  
san." She felt fiercely angry, coldly so, the kind of calm rage  
that could be shaped and honed and used like a blade if she had  
to.

Tokiko straightened, and glared imperiously at Utena from  
behind her tinted sunglasses. With her uninjured arm, she  
reached up and adjusted the tilt of her hat. "I don't know who  
or what you are," she said calmly, "but I don't intend to let a  
bunch of silly girls playing at being heroes interfere with me."

"Playing?" Utena almost sputtered. "You--you don't have any  
idea what you're talking about!"

"Don't I?" Obviously pained to do so, Tokiko raised her  
left hand and cupped it over her right fist. "You four think you  
can face this? You've no idea of what you're up against."

Utena's eyes narrowed. "How long have you been spying on   
us?" Perhaps six paces separated them, if she moved with long  
strides... if only she could figure out why this woman was so  
familiar...

"What, I'm supposed to give you convenient exposition just  
because you caught up to me?" Tokiko laughed, a sound that under  
another context Utena judged would have been quite pleasant.  
"Sorry, that's not the way it works." 

Smoothly, painlessly, she drew a black-bladed sword from her  
left palm and flourished it skilfully in her right hand. "You'd   
do well to turn away right now," she said softly, even a little  
sadly. "I didn't run because I was afraid of you--although   
you're a pretty deadly hand with a drink can, I'll admit--I ran   
because I didn't want this to come to bloodshed." The sword rose  
and pointed at Utena like an accusing finger. "But I won't hold  
back if you give me no other choice!"

"What are you?" Utena asked, eyes wide. Drawing a sword  
from within your own body, without another to assist you... she'd  
never seen that before... 

"Uh-uh," Tokiko said, smiling faintly as though at a  
remembered joke from long ago, "I said no exposition."

"Well, then..." Utena knelt down, picked up a wrist-thick  
pine tree branch almost as tall as her from ground, and smacked  
it twice against the earth to rid it of excess snow. "...I guess   
we'll just have to duel, then."

"Don't be foolish," Tokiko said, raising her voice. "You're  
going to fight me with a tree branch? You don't have a chance."

Utena shrugged, finding a grip that wouldn't get her hands  
poked full of needles. "I've done okay before." 

"Stupid--I hate people who won't look after themselves!"  
Tokiko snarled. Then her expression softened, and she smiled,  
condescendingly, but also with a little respect. "But I admire  
your courage. You remind me of someone I once knew."

She charged. Utena charged. Their weapons clashed. Tokiko  
lopped a clean foot off the end of Utena's branch with no   
resistance at all.

"Whoah!"

Tokiko reversed the motion and swept her sword upwards,   
taking off another foot as Utena backpedalled. 

"This black sword burns with the power of a hundred murdered  
souls," Tokiko said, advancing smoothly as a sailing-ship on calm  
seas and taking off one more foot. The branch was rapidly   
becoming useless as anything more than kindling. "And you   
challenged it with a tree branch? Brave..."

Utena ducked as the black sword whistled overhead. Its   
blade, lustreless and dark, appeared as though burnt by fire or   
rubbed in ashes. 

"But stupid."

Utena, half-crouched, hurled what remained of the branch at  
Tokiko's face; the woman cut it from the air with ease, but it   
gave her the moment of distraction she needed. She launched   
herself from the crouch with a loud cry, one arm and shoulder   
driving against Tokiko's waist, the other hand grappling for her  
sword wrist. They went down on the snow, Utena on top scrabbling  
for better purchase and trying to pin Tokiko's sword arm to the   
ground.

Tokiko got a knee up and shoved, almost throwing Utena off  
her; stronger than she looked. Utena clung desperately and   
dragged Tokiko with her by the sword arm. Tokiko cried out as   
her injured arm hit the ground; they rolled twice, and Utena   
ended up back on top again, getting in a good punch into Tokiko's  
short ribs in the process with her free hand. She banged Tokiko's  
sword hand against the frozen ground twice, trying futilely to   
get her to loose her grip on the sword.

"Let it go!" she cried, hitting Tokiko in the ribs again.  
The other woman gasped, eyes clouding with pain; her sunglasses  
had been knocked off in the scuffle, and were some distance away,  
lenses glittering on the snow. "I don't want to hurt you!"

(Get off!)

Attar, blood, iron, rain, fire, smoke--

She threw herself off just in time to avoid being pierced  
through the throat by the second sword that flumed point-first  
from between Tokiko's breasts. One ankle tangled with Tokiko's  
legs, though, or perhaps Tokiko tripped her, and she went down  
hard on her back, the thin layer of snow doing little to lessen  
the pain. Bright, amorphous shapes flashed before her eyes as   
her head bounced off the ground.

She was really feeling the cold now. What had she been  
thinking, running around in her bare feet and no jacket in the  
middle of winter? Okay, so she'd been trying to catch Tokiko,  
but that still wasn't any excuse... she could catch a chill, and  
then Anthy would insist on staying home from work to take care of  
her... she'd probably make that chicken soup of hers... damn,  
she'd hit her head really hard...

There was a shadow looming over her, a sword in one hand,  
another sword orbiting it like an attendant satellite. 

"Poor girl," said the shadow. "Even though your soul is  
barred to me, I can tell you've been through a lot of pain."

A face swam into a focus; a beautiful, sculptured, ageless  
face, enhanced rather than marred by the tiny beauty mark at the  
left-hand side of her mouth. Not unused to kindness, but with a  
hardness to it that almost hid that.

Realization hit Utena like a bolt of thunder. "You're her,"  
she said blearily. "The woman from the photograph."

"What?" Tokiko blinked, looking surprisingly girlish for a  
moment. Then she laughed softly. "I suppose it doesn't matter."

"Wait--"

A black sword hilt, graven in equal quantities with roses  
and thorns, slammed against her jaw like a hammer. The amorphous  
shapes rose again, bright and countless as stars. Then they   
faded, and there was only darkness.

* * *

Should have brought more arrows, the prince thought, as she   
vaulted nimbly over a jagged rock. Behind her, the serpent   
pursued down the mountainside in a cascade of scree. His hot   
breath washed over her ankles, and his jaws hissed and snapped   
continuously.

"Please, prince," he pleaded, in a voice cultured as any  
courtier of her father's kingdom, "wait. I wish only to clear up   
this misunderstanding that has brought us sadly into conflict."

As it lunged, she ducked behind a thick pine tree, which   
shattered to flinders as the serpent's great scaled head smashed  
against it like a battering ram. 

"Then why don't you stop trying to _eat_ me?" she growled,  
futilely swiping with her bow at the beast's nose as she   
retreated. At least she wasn't up in the mountains any more; the  
valley, overhung with trees and littered with boulders long-ago  
fallen from the slope, offered more places to hide.

"I really can't," the serpent said, sounding genuinely  
regretful. "It's in my nature to devour princes. Can't help   
it." He lunged again--but she saw it for a feint, and leapt  
aside from the true attack. Poisoned teeth scraped on stone with  
a bony screech. "Ouch!"

This time, she managed to give him a solid smack on the head  
with one end of her bow, which made tears of pain come into his  
beautiful, long-lashed dark eyes. He withdrew automatically,  
piling up his red-and-purple diamond-scaled coils into a tall  
tower and looking at her with a strangely betrayed expression.

"Really, can't we just talk this over like a rational prince  
and a rational talking serpent?" he asked, and lunged again, the  
impact digging a shallow trench in the rocky earth the prince had  
occupied a moment earlier.

Should have brought my sword, too, the prince thought.   
Stupid father, stupid tradition, only allowed to hunt the talking  
serpents with a bow, blah blah blah. She grabbed a jagged chunk   
of rock from the ground and bounced it off the serpent's armoured  
snout, drawing a thin line of whitish-green blood that smelt   
faintly like mint toothpaste.

"Again, I say, ouch!"

"Look," she argued, "this is ridiculous. It can't go on  
like this!"

"I quite agree," said the talking serpent, eyes glittering.  
"Which is why, during a moment of distraction, I have wound my  
tail around your legs."

The prince looked down. "Shit," she said. "Whoah!" Then  
she was on her back, head spinning, and there were three--no,  
wait, four--talking serpents looking down at her, all identical.  
Triplets were three, quintuplets were five, but she couldn't  
remember what four identical siblings were called. 

What a stupid thing to think about right before dying.

The four heads plunged, opening wide to reveal maws lined  
with red velvet. She heard thunderous hoofbeats, battle cries;  
silver flashed through the air.

"Woe! I am slain!" said the quadruplet serpents.   
Quadruplets! That was it. They fell back simultaneously out of  
her view, and the grip of the tail upon her ankles relaxed.

The prince lay on the ground, eyes closed, breathing slowly.  
She had no idea who her rescuers might be; they could be foe as  
easily as friend. As the hoofbeats approached closer, she   
cracked one eye open a slit.

They were three ladies, clad in white, mounted upon horses,  
each bearing silver javelins at her golden belt. They circled  
slowly, hooves ringing like bells.

"Is that a handsome prince I see?" said the first, who rode  
a horse the colour of fire.

"A handsome prince I think it be," confirmed the second,  
whose horse was all of purple, like the raiment of a king.

"He's not so handsome, so says me," the last said   
spurnfully, daintily mounted upon a buttercup-yellow horse.

Purple-horsed said, "You two should bear these tidings  
away."

"I think as leader _I_ should stay," fire-horsed said.

"He looks like a weirdo, this I say," sniffed yellow-  
horsed.

Fire-horsed sighed. "Then I suppose we all must go."

"To our queen to bear this tale of woe." Purple-horsed  
nodded.

"Away, I say, then we shall go!" Yellow-horsed reared her  
steed dramatically, nearly falling off in the process.

"We already used 'go'," purple-horsed protested.

"I couldn't think of another rhyme!" yellow-horsed said,  
struggling to keep upright in the saddle.

"Oh, forget it, I hated doing that stupid rhyming anyway,"  
muttered fire-horsed.

The three rode off, disappearing from the prince's sight  
behind a conveniently-placed boulder.

"Well," the prince said, slowly sitting up, "that was just  
completely bizarre." She untangled the limp coils of the  
serpent from her ankles and stood up. It lay quite dead,   
pierced by three silver javelins. The prince brushed dust off  
her hunting clothes and tried to decide what to do. During her  
flight from the serpent, she'd gotten quite lost, and was only   
now realizing that she had no idea where she was.

"Are you all right?"

She started and looked up. A handsome man in a cape of  
crimson feathers was perched on a nearby boulder, walking staff  
clutched in both hands. "Who are you?"

"I'm a birdcatcher." He smiled and hopped off the boulder.  
"But you're the fairest bird I've yet caught. Good thing I was  
here to rescue you from that serpent." Before she could stop   
him, he'd taken her hand and planted a chaste kiss upon it.

"Are you usually in the habit of claiming credit for heroic  
deeds you had nothing to do with, birdcatcher?" the prince asked,  
angrily snatching her hand away.

He winked at her, still kneeling at her feet. "All the   
time," he said, cheerfully guiltless. "Terrible habit, really,  
but it's my nature."

"Any other bad habits I should be aware of?"

"I tend to lie by omission a lot. And I'm rather   
manipulative." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I think that's  
it. But my heart's generally in the right place." His eyes  
misted a little. "It's just that no one's ever taught me how to  
be good."

Despite herself, she laughed. "You're silly."

"It's part of my charm."

The hoofbeats approached again, signalling the return of the  
three ladies. The birdcatcher looked up, startled, panic in his  
eyes.

"Birdcatcher! Just what are you up to now?" cried the   
leader of the ladies, mounted on her fire-coloured steed. She  
shook a silver javelin threateningly at the birdcatcher.

"Catching birds, like I always do," said the birdcatcher  
with a smile.

"Well, the queen will be coming soon, so you'd best make  
yourself scarce," said the one on the purple horse. She smiled  
unpleasantly. "Unless you'd like to deal with _her_, that is."

"Oh, no, that will be fine, pleasure meeting you, prince,  
hope we'll see each other again soon, goodbye!" The birdcatcher  
dived behind a boulder and disappeared from sight.

The prince walked slowly around the boulder. "Okay," she  
said. "He just vanished! What's going on?"

"Honestly, you don't know?" The one on the yellow horse  
looked disdainfully down her pert nose at the prince. "You're  
having a dream, silly."

The earth rumbled suddenly.

"Earthquake!" cried the prince.

"No, no, it's just the queen," corrected the lady on the  
fire-coloured horse. 

"She likes to make an entrance," the one on the purple horse  
whispered conspiratorially. 

The nearest mountain split down the middle like an eggshell  
being cracked, revealing a magnificent vaulted chamber within,  
lit by flickering braziers of gold and hanging chandeliers of  
diamond. A magnificent queen reclined upon a black marble   
throne, with one hundred attendants bowing at her feet and   
hiding their faces from sight.

"Look, can't I wake up now?" said the prince. "This is just  
getting dumber by the second."

"Not _every_ dream can be filled with profundity and   
foreshadowing, all right?" protested the queen in the prince's  
own voice. "Besides, I'm just a symbol, it's your subconscious."

(You want to wake up?)

"I just want to know what's really going on!"

(You want to wake up?)

"Fine, yes, I want to wake up!"

(Ascende huc, et ostendam tibi, quae oportet fieri post   
haec...)

"No Latin, damn it!"

And the sky turned black, and the earth shattered like the  
shell of an egg, and a red-eyed shadow rose from within the   
ruins like a phoenix rising from the ashes of its own cremation,  
one hand hurling down the stars, one hand ripping the sun and  
moon from their places.

She screamed, and woke.

"Utena! Utena!"

"Nanami," she tried to call, but it came out as a whisper.  
"Nanami, I'm over here..." Her whole body felt stiff as a   
board; she lay on something cold and hard. A stone bench. Harsh  
blue sky overhead. So cold...

"Utena!"

"I'm right here..."

"Oh my God, you don't even have _shoes_ on? What were you  
thinking, you lunatic? Running off by yourself like that,   
without proper winter attire... Utena, you idiot!" Nanami loomed  
over her, relief and anger mixing on her face. "You could have  
frozen to death! Don't you have any sense?" She blinked. "And  
why are you lying on a bench?"

"I guess Tokiko put me here after she knocked me out," Utena  
said. She tried to sit up, but it was just too cold, too cold to  
do anything but lie here...

Nanami doffed her long, fur-collared jacket, immediately  
beginning to shiver as she did, and worriedly forced Utena to sit  
up on the bench. "Come on, we have to get you inside and get you  
warmed up." Teeth chattering, she struggled to get the docile  
Utena into the coat, which was slightly too small in the   
shoulders. Finished that, she sat down on the bench and slipped  
off one of her boots. "I can't carry you, so I'll give you one   
of my boots; we'll have to support each other on the way back."  
She groaned. "Oh, God, we're going to cause a ridiculous scene."

"How's Shiori?" Utena managed to ask.

"She's fine," Nanami said briskly. "Now stand up and let's  
get back to the hotel before _I_ freeze to death."

"I had the weirdest damn dream," Utena murmured, as they  
began to hobble out of the park, arm in arm. "Wow, this is a   
really warm coat."

"Rub it in, why don't you?" Nanami muttered.

"Sorry."

"Just be quiet. Honestly, the things I have to go   
through..."

"Sorry."

"I should be back in Tokyo right now, working on that essay  
on cyclical themes in modern Japanese literature..."

"Yeah, you should."

"Damn it! I hate when the light changes to red just as you  
reach the crossing!"

"Sorry."

"That's not actually your fault, Utena."

"Oh yeah."

"C-Cold..."

"We could probably get this coat over both of us..."

"We look weird enough already. Besides, you need it more   
than I do."

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing. It's becoming tedious."

"Sor... okay."

* * *

"...where was she?"

"In the park across the street! Lying on a bench without   
even a coat or boots, can you imagine?"

"I don't think she really had time to dress properly when  
she set out in pursuit of our mystery woman."

"Not entirely a mystery... I've made another list..."

The waking moment faded like mist, and she fell again.

A pleasant little dream, a sleeping recollection, collation  
of imageries. The recent, the distant, the almost forgotten.  
Nanami, fussy as a mother hen, fluffing pillows and piling up  
bedcovers until she fell into a cocoonish sleep; Anthy, summer  
flu, chicken soup, playing cards while sitting up in bed, music  
on the radio--something by Brahms, she thought; her mother, and  
she was very small, a fever, Mother worriedly taking her  
temperature and wiping her forehead with a cool cloth. 

Safety, warmth; those were the feelings. No one relying   
upon her to do anything, in those moments. No responsibility at  
all. Safe, like the chick in its shell.

"...there's no one registered here of that name, no."

"She's almost certainly their aunt."

"Huh?"

"Akami told Miki she had to go meet her aunt. And Tokiko   
told me she was in town to deal with 'family matters' before   
she... wiped out my memory. Again! Damn her..."

"Who do these people think they are, that they can just play  
with people's memories like they're pieces of a jigsaw puzzle?   
Akio, Himemiya, and now _this_ woman... I hate them!"

No, don't hate her, it wasn't her fault, it wasn't... she  
didn't choose to walk the path she did... it was chosen for   
her... she was no more free than the rest of us... a prisoner,  
like all of us...

Please don't hate her.

More coherencies. Nanami forcing her to sit up on the park  
bench; Anthy throwing herself in the path of Saionji's sword  
during the final duel with him, to push her out of the way; Dios,  
coming to her in the darkest moment, like a light that would burn  
forever...

_She_ was the one who was supposed to be strong. She had to  
be strong, to not rely on other people... she had no right to  
drag anyone into this, using truth like a weapon against them,  
giving them no other choice but to follow her into the lair of  
the dragon...

"Is she awake?"

"No--and don't disturb her, she needs her rest."

"Don't act like such a mother. She's tough. A little cold  
won't have done her any damage. Wake up, Utena."

She slowly opened her eyes. Shiori was on one side of the  
bed, Nanami on the other. Chu-Chu was perched on her pillow,  
wide-eyed and concerned. She looked from one to the other, not  
knowing what to say, uncertain of what she'd dreamed and what  
she'd truthfully heard while drifting between dreaming and  
waking.

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked finally.

"About four hours," Nanami said. "It's just past six."

"You should have woken me sooner," she muttered.

"We had things under control," Shiori said soothingly.

That doesn't matter, Utena thought, but she nodded  
grudgingly.

Shiori handed her a piece of paper. "This is what we've  
figured out about her."

Utena browsed over in a little numbly. Shiori's handwriting  
was precise and elegant:

AKINO TOKIKO

\--Hates Akio.

\--Aunt of Akino Akami and Akino Hasuichi (very probable).

\--Witch? Magical powers (wiping memories).

"Pen," Utena said. Shiori gave her one, and she added:

\--Original name: Chida Tokiko.

\--Older than she looks.

\--Knew Mikage (Nemuro?).

\--Has been spying on us. Knows what we're up to?

\--Draws swords out of herself.

"Sorry my handwriting is so messy," she said, returning it.  
"So, fill me in."

"I met her yesterday," Shiori said shortly. "She was the   
one who drove me home after I, umm..." She glanced at Nanami.  
Nanami glanced away. "Anyway, I had a run-in with Akio. She  
showed up midway through. He's scared of her, Utena--I saw that,  
even if just for a moment."

"Yeah, well, she's not someone to take lightly." Utena  
rubbed her tender jaw and winced. "She's not against us, though;  
she could have killed me if she wanted to."

"Instead, she just left you to freeze to death," Nanami   
said, frowning.

Utena waved her hand dismissively. "I don't really know   
much about who she is. I saw her in an old photo Touga showed  
me, with Mikage and Akio. I'm almost certain it was her;   
there's no way she should look as young as she does."

"So, is she like Himemiya?"

Utena scratched her head uncomfortably. "I don't know.  
See, I really don't know what Anthy is, exactly, but... yeah,  
some of the stuff she did reminded me of stuff Anthy's done.  
Pretty safe to say she's a witch like Anthy. Whatever that is."  
She shrugged.

Shiori looked the list up and down, frowning heavily. "If  
she's against Akio too, and she knows what we're up to, why did  
she do all that. Wiping my memory, running away... doesn't she  
see we'd be better off combining forces?"

"Her goals might be different from ours," Utena said.   
"And... well, I don't think she thinks we're up to the job," she  
finally muttered. "She said stuff about us 'playing at being  
heroes'. That we didn't know what we were up against."

"We don't," Nanami pointed out.

"Yeah." Utena sighed. "Maybe she just wants to handle it  
on her own. Whatever it is." She blinked. "Hey, where's  
Juri?"

"Getting dinner," Shiori replied.

"Take-out," Nanami added.

"It'd probably be a good idea if none of you went off on   
your own," Utena said. "Hey, stop looking at me like that." 

"It's my fault," Shiori muttered. "I was the one who told  
you to go after her."

"Well, she ran." Utena shrugged. "Neither of us had any  
way of knowing she'd get vicious when cornered."

Shiori sighed. "Number nine." She sat down at the desk and  
rested her head on her arms. "I can't believe how easy it was   
for her... if Utena hadn't been there, I wouldn't have been able  
to do _anything_."

"She said my soul was barred to her," Utena murmured. "I  
think that might have been why she ran. She tried to do   
something to me, but couldn't. But why?"

This was the second time she'd felt that surging power; when  
she'd fought the Knight of Pentacles, it had let her throw him   
out the window like he weighed nothing at all. A much heavier   
and taller man, from a position of totally inadequate leverage.

"Don't feel bad about it." Strange, how things   
transformed... Nanami, trying now to give comfort to Shiori.  
"I don't think any one us by ourselves could have done anything."  
There was a significant pause. "You know... it's frightening, to  
think about it. I could have run into her yesterday, and she  
could have altered my memories, and I wouldn't even know."

She'd thrown a can hard enough to break a woman's shoulder,  
had run without jacket or boots through the cold without feeling  
it at all...

What was wrong with her?

"I don't think she's very good at it." Shiori raised her  
head from the pillow of her arms, and laughed softly. "As far as  
being able to play with people's memories goes... I _knew_ there   
was something that should go at number nine, it was like a word   
right at the tip of my tongue... I couldn't stop thinking about  
it, and then, when I saw her again, it hit me all at once."

"But what was she doing here in the first place?"

"Came back to finish the job, maybe. Or perhaps to deal  
with all of us. I don't know." Shiori ran a nervous hand   
through her hair. 

Utena kicked off the covers, swung her legs out of bed, and  
headed for the bathroom. "I'm going to shower," she said,  
wrinkling her nose. "Sleeping in my clothes after a chase and a  
fight has given me a distinctly funky odour."

In the shower, she thought very deliberately of nothing at  
all, and let the hot water soothe her aches and pains. Bruise on   
her cheek. Welt on her wrist. Sore jaw. White, white scar on   
her belly and back, marking the passage of Anthy's sword through  
her body.

Where were the other wounds? The swords had come upon her  
like birds of prey, and she remembered a moment of awesome pain.  
Then turmoil, shadows and conflicts of memories that might never  
have been. Then Anthy, and life had definition again.

When she got out of the shower, Juri was back; the others  
were unpacking cardboard cartons and paper plates, doling out   
napkins and chopsticks and canned drinks. They sat on the floor,  
cross-legged, and ate takoyaki and yakisoba and rice crackers,  
indulgently feeding Chu-Chu while Utena told the brief tale of   
her pursuit and battle with Tokiko.

"It seems we've got a number of opposing interests   
concentrated here," Juri said at the end. She steepled her  
fingers and tried to look thoughtful, which probably would have   
been more effective if she hadn't been slurping the last few  
inches of a noodle into her mouth. "Since our objective is  
actually fairly simple, we may be able to come in up the middle  
of whatever conflict is brewing and accomplish our goal."

"Deadman trigger," Nanami said worriedly. 

"In the long run, is the world better off with or without  
Akio in it, whatever the short-term consequences may be?" Juri  
asked softly.

Utena almost told them about the dream, but didn't. The  
ending was undoubtedly meaningless as the rest of it. Dreams   
were only dreams.

No one had anything to say after what Juri said, so the   
topic of conversation switched to the lunch she and Shiori had  
had with Miki earlier in the day.

"It was very nice, and we learned absolutely nothing."   
Juri hesitated, then sighed deeply. "He's definitely hiding  
something. He's far too concerned with convincing me that he's  
leading a happy, normal, uneventful life."

"Maybe he thinks he is?" Nanami said with a shrug.

"No. There's something going on. I know him well enough to  
tell that. At least, I used to." Juri sighed again. "Maybe, if  
I'd..." Suddenly, she shook her head, flinging her curls from  
side to side. "Nanami, you knew him better than I did, after  
Kozue died... did he ever say anything to you, anything at all  
that might be important?"

"No," replied Nanami. Perhaps too quickly, Utena thought,   
but she said nothing. "After graduation, you know, he moved away  
to go to university, and I went to Tokyo... I didn't even know he  
was teaching at Ohtori until yesterday." She frowned. "Touga   
had to have known. Why didn't he tell me?"

"He said he didn't want to get you involved." Everyone  
looked at Utena, who cleared her throat nervously. "At lunch  
today. We talked about what he's been doing, trying to find out  
what's going on--"

"What he says he's been doing," Juri said pointedly.

"Yeah. Whatever. And he didn't want to get you involved.  
That was probably why he didn't tell you about Miki."

Nanami frowned, and said nothing.

Pen scratched on paper as Shiori worked on a revision of her  
earlier list. "So much to deal with..." she muttered unhappily.

"We need to stop trying to see the whole tapestry," Juri  
said sagely. "Because we can't, you know. We don't have the  
necessary perspective. What we need to do is grab a thread and  
pull, and hope it unravels the whole thing."

"The gallery opening?" Nanami asked.

Juri nodded. "Exactly. Even if it's a trap, we'll at least  
know a little more. And, like Shiori said, it's a public event.  
What's the worst that can happen?"

Nanami grinned. "You really want that answered? I've got  
some ideas..."

Juri chuckled humourlessly. "Save them. I've got enough   
of my own."

Utena drained the last of her drink, and found herself  
thinking about Miki. Sweet, idealistic, innocent Miki, who'd  
been her friend. Now, he was caught in Akio's web, caught up  
tight enough that they couldn't trust him. Juri was blaming  
herself, she could see that, and maybe Nanami was too, because  
there was definitely _something_ she wasn't telling.

Then again, who was she to judge people for that? Hey  
everyone, big revelation time, I didn't just live in Akio's   
tower, I let myself fall in love with him, though I knew he had a  
fiancee, and I let him kiss me, and touch me, and I even let him  
_fuck_ me--

"Utena? Something wrong?"

"Huh?"

Nanami pointed. "You just snapped your chopsticks."

"Oh." She grimaced, and let the broken utensils drop to the  
carpet. "We've got extras, right?"

Never lose that strength and nobility, even when you grow   
up. Fine job she'd done of that. No wonder her sword hadn't   
been worthy enough, hadn't been good enough...

Kaoru Kozue, whom she'd hardly known at all. Dead. Ohtori  
Kanae, a sweet girl, engaged to the devil like something out of a  
bad horror movie. Dead. Tsuwabuki Mitsuru, earnest and brave,  
hating childhood, wanting to be an adult. Imprisoned. How many  
others in these seven years, lives torn apart by Akio's mad   
games, because _she_ hadn't been strong enough, because _she_ had  
let it fester for seven years...

"Here."

She took the chopsticks from Nanami, ate without tasting,  
talked without speaking. Conversation became inconsequential,   
like they were just a group of friends at a sleepover. Someone   
turned the television on, and they watched a game show where   
people performed inconsequential tasks for useless glittering  
prizes. Juri and Nanami got into a heated argument over  
something in one of Nanami's fashion magazines. Then they began  
to argue about where to go shopping tomorrow. Shiori rolled her  
eyes and found a deck of cards, and they played poker for pocket  
change.

A few hours passed, through which Utena moved robotically.  
She laughed when it was expected (Shiori, suggesting deadpan that  
they change the game to strip poker, which had sent Nanami into  
a scandalized, red-faced rage and Juri into almost convulsive  
laughter), but fragments of the day ran through her head like a  
litany of her sins. How different was what she'd done from Akio,  
using people's memories against them? Using "truth" as her   
excuse for changing their lives permanently, just like he'd  
justified all the pain and ruination he'd caused by claiming the  
existence of ideals she couldn't comprehend.

Eventually, shortly after ten, when everyone else was   
yawning and tired and giggly (and she, to fit in, was pretending  
to be the same), Juri and Shiori left for their room. Chu-Chu  
had already climbed into his box and was fast asleep.

"Goodnight, Utena."

"Goodnight, Nanami."

"I'm glad we all got along so well tonight. It was nice.  
Better than yesterday." Nanami laughed softly in the darkness,  
punctuating it with a yawn. "Then again, it wouldn't have been  
hard for Shiori and I to get along better than yesterday..."

"Uh-huh."

"It's kind of like a war, I guess. When you have a common  
enemy, you learn to get along, to work together... because that's  
the only way to win."

"Uh-huh."

"Anyway, goodnight."

"G'night."

It took perhaps half-an-hour for her to become confident   
enough that Nanami was asleep to get out of bed. She stood in  
the middle, between their two beds. In the residual light   
coming through the window, she could see Nanami curled up  
beneath the covers, knees almost at her chest, hands tucked  
under her chin. Sleeping like a little kid. With all the  
imperious hardness common to her expression gone, she looked  
heartbreakingly young. Utena had to resist the urge to tuck in  
her blankets, which were a little dishevelled.

She dressed quickly; black shirt, dark jeans. She took the  
sheathed sword from the bottom of the drawer. At the closet near  
the door, she put on her boots; then, rather guiltily, she took  
Nanami's jacket down from the hanger and slipped into it. It   
wasn't that small on her, and, unlike her coat, it was long   
enough to conceal the sword from casual sight. To her relief,  
Nanami had left the keys to the rental car beside her purse, not  
in it.

"Oniisama..."

She froze. Bedsprings squeaked, soft like mice, as Nanami  
stirred a little.

"Oniisama, no..."

Just talking in her sleep. Anthy had done that a few times,  
always in languages she didn't speak. German, once, and another  
time something she thought was Chinese, and one more time in a  
language that was totally unfamiliar. She'd never asked about  
it.

She went to the door, put her hand upon the handle, quietly  
began to turn. Soft movement across the carpet behind her, and a  
gentle, "Chu."

She turned and knelt down. His eyes glittered in the  
darkness, seeming to hold their own light.

"I've got to go," she whispered. 

He held out his stubby arms to her. The message was clear,  
but she shook her head. "No. You can't come."

His eyes flashed. He turned his head, and looked pointedly  
towards the sleeping Nanami.

"Yeah. You could wake her up. Then it would all be  
ruined. But I don't think you will." She paused. "Because you  
know; you know that this is what I should have done from the  
start."

He did, said, nothing. 

"Tell Anthy I'm sorry, if I don't..." She sucked in a   
breath. "One way or another, I'm ending this tonight."

"Chu," he said. "Chu. Chu chu chu."

"Yeah."

He held out his arms again.

"No." With one finger, she stroked his head. "Go back to  
sleep." She rose, opened the door as softly as possible. Chu-  
Chu was still standing there as she closed it, but he made no  
sound at all.

* * *

Raise; the blade must not waver. Cut down, turn and raise, cut   
to the side, twist the wrists, cut to the other side. Turn, and  
repeat.

The sweat poured down his bare chest, which heaved as he did  
movement after movement. Swordplay as a dance; not balletic  
excess, but a modern thing, spare and graceful and without a  
single wasted motion. Maximum power with minimum effort.

Barefoot and wearing only loose, dark pants, he did this  
nightly, moving the folding screens that divided the penthouse  
into sections aside so at to give himself clear space. It was  
not ideal; one of the only things he missed about the old house  
was the yard to practice in. But there were so many other things  
that he didn't miss; the trade-off had been more than worth it. 

Barako watched him intently from her usual place on the  
ottoman, tail lashing from side to side like a whip. She had  
always been a good companion to him; the only one, it seemed,  
that he'd ever managed to treat as a friend should be treated.

Cut, and, with each cut, perhaps he cut away a little more  
of what he'd once been. What he remembered being, at least; the  
epicurean playboy, selfish and insincere, without real belief in  
friendship or love. A man of gleaming surfaces, rusting below   
them. He hadn't always been like that; in childhood, he   
remembered being exasperated with love for his sweet, silly,  
devoted little sister. And Kyouichi, closer than any brother   
ever could have been. 

He hadn't always been like that, and he didn't know what had  
changed him. Adolescence, the passage from boy to man, he   
remembered only with vague, placid, uncertain images. Somewhere,  
the image he'd had for himself as a grown man, forged in equal  
parts from "A Book of Five Rings" and "Acts of King Arthur and His  
Noble Knights", had become twisted. He'd wanted to be chivalrous  
and stoic; a knight, a warrior. But he'd ended up as a cad   
wearing chivalry's mask.

Cut again, and pause; the phone was ringing. Bokuto still   
held loosely in one hand, he went to answer it. He was nearly  
certain of who it was even before he picked it up; no one else  
would be calling this late.

"Hello... yes, of course you can come up."

He entered the code to give her access to the building and  
the penthouse, and hurried to prepare himself. He grabbed a  
light silken robe, white with red trim, from off the back of a   
chair and belted it tightly around his waist. His bokuto was  
replaced on the rack in the corner, beneath the sheathed katana.  
The folding screens were quickly moved back into their normal  
positions; he finished the last of the manoeuvring just as the  
elevator dinged, and she stepped off.

"My sister has a coat just like that," he said lightly,  
watching carefully how she kept one hand beneath the long coat,  
obviously concealing something. He took a step towards her.   
"You know, perhaps the three of us should get together... how  
well did you know my sister? The two of you only would have   
been a year apart. Were you friends?"

"Touga..." She couldn't seem to look him in the eye; a  
powerful ache began in his chest, because she carried such sorrow  
in her. And her face was that of the prince of his dreams, his  
saviour. 

But she carried something else as well, under her coat, and  
it might mean his death. 

"Yes, Utena-kun?"

"I just came... I came to say..."

"What?" He tensed his body in preparation, while appearing  
completely relaxed on the surface. 

On the ottoman, Barako stirred and flicked her tail,   
observing the two of them with her green eyes.

"Goodbye."

He was moving even as she said it, swiftly and smoothly; her  
eyes widened and her hand came out from under the coat, but she  
didn't have time to draw. He caught her wrists and shoved her  
back against the closed doors of the elevator, using his greater  
mass to his advantage, twisting so that the sheathed sword fell  
to the floor. His foot lashed out and kicked it aside.

"Sorry," he said sadly. "I'm not ready to go yet. I really  
did trust you, at first." She struggled, tried to bring a knee  
up; he blocked with his hip and pressed his body against hers,   
pinning her between him and the elevator doors. "But maybe that  
was foolish--how'd he get you all in on it? You, my sister,   
Arisugawa... Takatsuki." The last name came out tinged with   
regret; one of the few hearts he'd wounded to which he could   
still put a name and a face. "What did he promise you all?"

"You were spying on me?" Her face, only inches from his,  
actually looked shocked and betrayed. Still beautiful, though;  
he remembered the taste of her lips. He felt much more regret  
than anger.

"Don't act so surprised," he said softly. Beneath him, she  
was all tension-tightened muscle and slender curves; strong for  
her size, but he was stronger, and he had leverage. "You tried  
to play me for a fool, I guess--maybe it's all been a lie all  
along, the prince that I dreamed of, or maybe he found you, or  
made you somehow, I don't know what he's capable of, he doesn't  
seem to age..." Suddenly, he found his voice half-choked by   
grief and pain and frustration. "But it can't all have been a   
lie," he whispered. "There has to be such a thing as a prince.  
Because what have I been living for otherwise, if not to become  
that thing?"

She'd stopped struggling some time ago, gone almost limp.  
His chest was heaving with each breath, whereas she was almost  
motionless. Her eyes filled full of tears; they began to fall   
down her face in shining streams.

He stepped back, keeping his grip on her wrists, loosening  
it a little but ready to tighten it again at any time.   
"Utena-kun..."

"It's all my fault," she said, softest whisper, purest pain.  
"All of it. I wasn't strong enough. So Kozue-chan died, and   
Kanae-san died, and..." She sobbed once, a sound that ripped  
itself raggedly from her trembling throat. "I should have stayed  
in that coffin. I should have stayed in there and never come out  
into the sun again."

It's a trick, some part of him thought. But he knew it  
wasn't. There was a very tangled skein here, a history that he  
didn't know. Something had been torn from him, and she was a  
part of it.

He released her wrists, and drew her weeping body gently  
against his, rubbing her back, stroking her hair. "Won't you let  
me in?" he pleaded softly. "Won't you trust me? I don't know  
what I did to you, to make you not trust me... I know I don't  
deserve it. I can't ask for it, or require it... but won't you  
let me in? Won't you let me help you?"

She said nothing, but sobbed against his shoulder. He  
raised her head with a thumb beneath her chin, lowered his lips   
to her forehead. He kissed there, along her hairline, her brows,  
the bridge of her nose, the corners of her eyes. He kissed the  
streams of tears upon her cheeks, hot and salty, sweet and   
intoxicating as wine.

His body stirred to the pressure of her, the hardness and   
the softness, and something abyssal stirred with it, like a wave  
building far out to sea, approaching inexorably towards the  
shore...

His lips found hers, or hers found his; they found one  
another, after so long a seeking, after time that seemed   
infinite. He had sought this so often, come close, but never  
close enough...

Her hands were beneath his robe, running over his skin;  
caressing his shoulders, moulding his hard pectorals, nails  
scoring lightly down his breastbone. Lips were the world, the  
world consisted of soft lips and roaming hands and gentle cries  
from her, halfway between sobs and moans.

And the meowing of a cat, rubbing against their legs.

He paused, disentangled himself from her. She stared up at  
him; uncertain, disappointed, expectant. "Touga..."

"She's a jealous lady," he said softly, kneeling down and  
gathering his cat into his arms. He turned his back on Utena,  
crossed the floor to the bathroom, dropped Barako to the floor  
within, and closed the door. He'd apologize to her later.

"Now... where were we?"

"Right here, I think," she whispered, and they resumed. One  
of her legs wrapped around one of his like a limber ivy vine; her  
hands unbelted his robe and slipped it from his shoulders. It  
fell to the floor, pooling in silken folds at their feet. He  
kissed her chin, her jawline, her left ear, her right ear, the  
hollow of her throat, the side of her neck; he removed her coat  
(his sister's coat, he knew, not knowing why, not caring in that  
moment, for the world beyond her body did not exist) and tossed   
it aside. Her fingers roamed freely through his hair, found the   
ribbon tied near the base to keep it out of his eyes while he  
practiced, undid it.

"I prefer it loose," she whispered, and then her lips were  
on his again. He undid the buttons of her shirt one by one,  
giving his hands access to her slim shoulders, her small breasts,  
her flat stomach. Her lips moved down, tracing a path along his  
throat to his collarbone. He ran his hands down her back, from  
shoulderblades to small, and she sighed and bent inward towards   
him like a hunter's bow. Her fingers fumbled with the drawstring  
of his pants. He murmured something wordless to her and lifted   
her up, one arm behind her knees, the other cradling her back.   
She wrapped her arms around his neck as he carried her towards   
the bed, covering his face with kisses fierce as falling hail. 

His life had been building to this moment, even if he had  
never realized it. They reached the bed, and he laid her gently  
down, his body over hers, his shadow across her, and they kissed  
again and again. She pressed her hands against his chest and  
brought him down onto his side, came against him, their bodies  
locked tight like two matched pieces of a puzzle. 

"Have we done this before?" he whispered; he spoke like a  
child, like a man adrift at sea.

"You and I?" she whispered back, between kisses and  
caresses. "No... no, we never did."

"How strange..." he replied. "I feel as though we've done  
this so often before..."

The wave crested, approached the shore, dark-bodied,   
white-crowned; the gulls soared above it, filling the air with  
harsh cries. He played her body like a musician, tongue and lips  
and fingers all in concert; he was well-versed with how to give a  
woman pleasure, although it had been years since he'd done so.  
He learned the story of her body as things progressed, her  
responses--inhalations and exhalations of breath, movements of  
body, inadvertent words--telling the tale to him... She hadn't  
done this often; probably only a few times; the memory of those  
times were unhappy. This one would not be, he swore. The wave  
of his soul towered to the stars, as he tried to show her that  
it was not all about taking, not all about dominance, that a man  
could give as well as take... show her, and show himself, for   
once, let him treat a woman right...

He made her believe. He thought he did. She said his name  
like it was precious to her, like it was a treasured shining  
thing, and the wave swelled...

They moved together, and it was like the movement of wind  
upon the waves, sea upon the shore, it was white birds circling,  
it was everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever  
needed... she was fire beneath him, ice above him, thunder in his  
bones, lightning in his sinews, she was his secret heart, she was  
the axis of his world, she was the world, the world, the world  
ended and began with her...

The wave came on, apocalyptic, annihilating, black as the  
night, and the foam upon it shone like lightning. It roared   
like a lion, it howled like a wolf, and he cried out her name,  
again and again and again as the wave crashed down upon him, and  
she called his own name back to him, once, just once, only once.

It ended. They lay in each other's arms, sweaty and spent  
and exhausted, staring at each other as though at strangers,   
blue eyes into blue eyes.

"I didn't mean for this to happen," she whispered. "I just  
came to say goodbye." She rose from bed, gathered up her strewn  
clothing with quick, precise, mechanical movements. "I need to  
take a shower. I need to..." She trailed away, heading towards  
the bathroom. He watched her go; she opened the door, and Barako  
scampered out past her legs and came dashing towards the bed. He  
lay beneath a single sheet, kneading the cat's ears and thinking  
as he listened to the shower running.

When she came out again, towelling her hair, he spoke  
slowly, softly.

"Utena," he said, "I remember. I remember everything."

End of Jaquemart - Part VIII


End file.
